The Dr. Lam Show

Fasting Mimicking Diet and Longevity with Dr. Joseph Antoun

May 08, 2022 Dr. Lam
The Dr. Lam Show
Fasting Mimicking Diet and Longevity with Dr. Joseph Antoun
Show Notes Transcript

Want to lose weight and teach your body to live longer? Dr. Antoun of L-Nutra describes the perfect way to do it with Prolon, the fasting mimicking diet that is sustainable and attainable long term.

01:50 - Dr. Joseph Antoun's journey with how food can impact aging
04:45 - Analogy of Fasting with Business
06:30 - Walter Longo's fasting Research
09:40 - Fasting Mimicking Diet, Prolonged Fasting
11:55 - What does the Prolon diet look like? Is it about the calories?
16:00 - Longevity Diet
20:00 - Women can lose 5-6 pounds each cycle, Men can lose 8 pounds each cycle.

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Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

Hello, welcome to The Dr. Lam Show. I'm Dr. Carrie Lam and I have Dr. Joseph Antoun here with me. Today we will be going through fasting for longevity and how it helps your overall health, so you'd definitely want to stay tuned. Dr. Joseph Antoun, CEO and Chairman of the Board of L-Nutra and a member of the Forbes Business Development Council. He works with Professor Valter Longo, the director of Longevity Center at USC and they are providing education and products to help support lifestyle that extends health. In short, increasing your years of healthy living. Dr. Antoun has completed his studies in public policy at Harvard University and in public health at Johns Hopkins and his doctorate in medicine and Master's in medical and biological sciences at St. Joseph University. So, welcome Dr. Antoun. We are very excited to be able to talk about living long and healthy lives.

Dr. Joseph Antoun:

Thanks for hosting me and for being supportive of changing people's life and keeping them as healthy as possible.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

Indeed. I actually started using L-Nutra or Prolon and heard about you and Dr. Valter. Longo a few years back, and I have tried it myself. And we do recommend it to our patients in our clinic. So excited to be able to talk to you a little more about it. Please give us a rundown about how this came into your journey? Why are you passionate about this trend, what you guys are doing?

Dr. Joseph Antoun:

Yeah, so as you mentioned, we're both physicians. I wanted to be a cardiologist at first and during my rotations, when I saw the patients, I realized that the best we can do for them was to give them a medicine that they have to take every day, especially for diabetes, blood pressure and cholesterol. And I started thinking about if it's worth. Why do they have to refill it every month? So I was like, okay, this is more of a lifestyle issue for them, you know. The typical 60 year old, or 65, or 70, male or female or even at age 40. A little bit more stress in their life and life becomes quite challenging, gaining a bit of weight and have unhealthy habits and lack of sleep. So obviously, they get high blood pressure and then an increase in blood glucose levels. And I thought, we should bring lifestyle medicine to the clinic and not just prescription medicine to the college. So I started studying health policy and public health to learn how we can change the health system to embrace prevention and to embrace healthy aging and lifestyle medicine. And then long story short, I then heard about Professor Valter Longo, who is the head of the longevity Institute at USC. And he was looking at how food can impact life and a sense of how it impacts healthy aging, and that attracted me a lot. Although I was in med school, I just had a one hour nutrition lecture which is insufficient. Nutrition affects us every day in our lives, from the day you're born till the day you die. It must carry one of the biggest signal to your epigenetics and how your body responds including your microbiome etc. Imagine we never think about the same thing you eat every day 3-4 times throughout your lifespan. So Dr. Longo had the smart idea and said, how can I help patients to live a healthy long life. The Time Magazine nominated him among the 50 most influential people in health because he started studying fasting and one of his biggest discoveries was that if you fast for several days, there's like an emergency which pushes the cells to rejuvenate and try to fix them inside. I always give the example of a company and say you need $2 million per month to operate. It's like the buddy needing 2000 calories in a food analogy. Most diets will give you a lower count, some might say I'll give you 1.8 million. So you have a $200,000 gap, your bank account drops. Similarly, in the buddy measurement, if I give you 1800 or 600, you lose five, that's your reserve, that's your bank account. Now fasting comes in. Imagine you need 2 million to operate and I give you zero. So not only your bank account drops fast, so that only you lose fat, fast, which a lot of people love about the fasting, mimicking diet or prolonged or fasting in general. But also you're putting a big stress on the company. Imagine you're the CEO of a company, you have $0 This month, it's a big crisis. So what you're going to do? You're going to run and you're going to look into your reserves, and try to restructure the company, right? You got some of the extra expenses, whatever extra dinners and extra travel and you get to talk to your team and maybe cut their salaries, and it was a couple of them that's not performing well, you even let them go. So there's a functional and structural change due to the stress of the gap in funds and in the body. In the body terminology when you are fasting, every cell of the body is lacking the calories. Every cell is saying hey, buddy sorry, I have some fat, I have some bank reserve. But it's not enough and the body tells the cells that you need to restructure that we call the process autophagy or self eat or self rejuvenate, and it won the Nobel Prize in medicine and physiology in 2016, and this is what all the work that Dr. Longo has done on rejuvenation, restoration with fasting. Now everyone talks about fasting for the last 3-4 years as a lifestyle movement. I think the latest statistics show that 8-10% of all adult Americans are experimenting with fasting or interested in doing it.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

That's great research that you've done and a great analogy that you said that sometimes your body just needs that restructuring and needs that stress in order to do it. And it is kind of an acute stress. But can you define what you mean by fasting? How long it does it have to be in order for you to have that kind of response?

Dr. Joseph Antoun:

You can divide fasting into intermittent fasting or periodic fasting. Intermittent, that means less than two days. And why we pick the two days because less than two days you have enough reserve, whether it's fat in the liver, or glycogen in the muscle. So you have enough in the bank to support the body in two days. So the fasting that you do for several hours up to two days works mainly by helping you lose the weight, which has a lot of metabolic benefits. The fasting that you do to cross two days is where the crisis is so high that the cells now are involved in rejuvenation. And that's the fasting that has even more weight loss obviously because you're crossing two days so you lose even more weight and you're starting to have some biological effects on the cells. And this is why we created and actually the first dollars that came to create the fasting mimicking diet were coming from the National Institute of Health. We're very thankful for their support but people cannot do several days of water fasting. 99.9% of people cannot and should not probably just fast and water for long periods. So when you started hearing about the fasting mimicking diet and Prolon, it's basically a nutritional program that can help you go on a periodic fasting and a prolonged fasting so that you get more of a cellular and healthy aging lifestyle and lose more weight. So, what most people practice today, is the 16:8 which is intermittent fasting, 16 hours of no food they skip breakfast. The biggest question is when does autophagy happen? When is the crisis? Is it on day one, day two, day three? We believe for most people, it really starts to become significant on day two and to some people it can even after 24 hours start getting into autophagy. But in general, people who are doing

16:

8, although many of them think they're getting deep into autophagy, they're not, unless in the morning, they do have exercise. Also, unless they have a high metabolic rate and literally no reserves to kind of start getting into it. So it's a great practice to lose weight.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

Can you define this fasting mimicking diet or prolonged fasting? What do you mean by that?

Dr. Joseph Antoun:

It's a nutrition technology, a new way of thinking that was discovered, again by Prof Valter Longo and the support of L-Nutra, and the University of California which basically was, can we nourish the body but without satisfying the cells? So to make that easy if we go back to the CEO example that needs $2 million? Well, if you give him like every other night, say 1.8 million, it doesn't have to restructure, because there's no crisis. But if you give him $450,000 or$700,000, there's still a big gap of 1.3 million. So they need an incentive to go and restructure. And by the way, that half a million dollar you gave him could be put into work because he doesn't need to pay his salaries, he doesn't need to order the supply to sell next month and survive. So not only if you give zero like water fast, there's a danger of this company that CEO has to make good and bad decisions. Because if you have no money, your superstar employees will leave the company and you have a lot of good and bad decisions. The fasting mimicking diet came about by again, the researchers at USC and the NIH support the health fund, you know, funds to say, okay, can we make fasting more compliant? Can we nourish the body with proteins that are plant based? Can we nourish the body with healthy fats? Can we learn to give the body and micronutrients so that the body during the transition of fasting has enough nutrients and funds to go through it while keeping the stress on the cells? When it was researched, it was very delicate. It was, how can we find it? It's 77 ingredient foods. So, you get your box and you eat over five days, and it's great tasting food. You'll be like, how am I fasting! It's basically, by the time it gets to the proteins, growth signals and carbs and the insulin signal, and the fats is actually controlled in a way to nourish without satisfying cellular stress for rejuvenation.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

So, just for our listeners, when you talked about the five days of fasting, you're not feeding yourself, you will have a bar in the morning, maybe have soup, maybe three olives, I remember, I was like, wow, this is my snack, maybe like one cracker. So the amount of calories is way less than a normal meal. So that's what is, like you said, tricking your body into saying, okay, I'm getting just a little so that I could do work, but I'm still restructuring yourself.

Dr. Joseph Antoun:

In the right way is 30 calorie count. I mean, actually, on average, say an average woman it's 1600 calories or 1800. So Prolon the name of the product, the five day fasting mimicking diet is between 800-1100. It's still above 50% of your calories. And that's the engine we're at. It's not fasting by starvation, meaning you can fast by eating cucumber and lettuce and then you'll be fasting. But you'll be fasting by deprivation by starvation, which is not what we're saying is necessarily the healthy way. The product gives you at least 50% of what you typically eat in a day. But again, in a formulation that does not satisfy the cells. And this is why it's the technology and the pattern. We have over 300 patents that are filed globally. Be an innovation and be that it fast to what is nourishing you rather than them by starvation.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

Meaning the nutrients that you're giving, in the bar or similar, has been studied to be able to still fast, right? What if someone just came in and said I'm going to do a five day restricted calorie, maybe 100 It wouldn't have the same effects?

Dr. Joseph Antoun:

That's why you know, between 800-1,100 Your body recognizes the food unless you have the fasting mimicking formulation, because it's a significant amount of calories right? So we're not fasting you with 200 calories, you're fasting with 800 to 1100 calories. You're being nourished to half of what your body needs. If you don't eat a steak, your body would know. If you eat a chocolate bar somewhere for just 200 calories your body would sense it. This discovery took 13 years of science and research. It started at USC and now there's 18 universities involved. Stanford is doing some of the trials and at Indiana University and 16 other global universities doing their trials on it. It's a delicate secret formulation to nourish while keeping the fasting signal not to starve and keeping the fasting signal.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

In general, can you just give a rundown of knowing how to nourish without fasting?

Dr. Joseph Antoun:

The secret is when all these nutrients and we have 77 nutrients within the food, get in the form, like you mentioned, in the form of bars, soups, crackers, supplements and drinks, and there's a breakfast, lunch and dinner into it. But, if you wanted to, and it runs down to two main things, that when these nutrients come to the body, they don't spike the body metabolic recognition of food. So insulin and growth factor, tells the body I have enough carbs, I have enough protein. We study the ingredients so that they don't spike the recognition of food at an endocrine level. Then on a cellular level, the pKa, the RAS pathways, which tell the cell that there's nutrients. We also studied the formulation to not trigger those receptors and get the cell recognition that there's enough food. So it's how can we eliminate the endocrine recognition and the cellular recognition of food?

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

Right. So what are the studies about longevity? Because why do we call this longevity diet?

Dr. Joseph Antoun:

A lot of it was the name of the book of our founder, and I think I have a copy here. It was one of the best sellers when published for Amazon. The main topic is about the fasting mimicking diet, but it's also what to eat, what to eat after the five days. Why a lot of people associate healthy aging, with the fasting mimicking diet, whether is it a calorie discussion or just a weight loss discussion. A lot of the experts such as yourself, talk about healthy aging type of plan or a longevity lifestyle type of diet. It's because of what we talked about it, it helps metabolism, weight loss and the benefits that come from that. But actually, it's inducing some type of positive pressure and fasting on the cells, which then induce the cells to or help the cells to rejuvenate. So the fasting mimicking diet works mostly by metabolic plus cellular rejuvenation. And when you combine both, it impacts healthy aging, and a lifestyle of longevity when you eat healthy and you do in between the fasting mimicking diet.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

So do you have some concrete numbers? Or what does the science say? How often do you have to do it? Or and how many years of life do you get?

Dr. Joseph Antoun:

We have but it's unpublished. I don't want to spoil the paper, we are expecting to publish a quantification of what is the bio age score before and after doing a Prolon. In most of our trials, we tested doing three or four times the fasting mimicking diet or Prolon per year. And this is great news for the listeners, because typically, it's either take a pill every day, or be on a nutritional and lifestyle change every day, which people default on both, right? At best, they comply with medicine with 40%. And we have an endless number of businesses and food that want to sell you everyday food. What we're saying is, you do Prolon three or four times a year meaning five days times three is 15 or 20 days out of 365 days. If you commit 15 to 20 days to the fasting mimicking diet or to Prolon the brand name, we believe that's a good outcome. In one analogy if you watch a little bit car racing and you see this cars it's like our buddy are getting you know burned and burned and then what they do is like once or twice, only in a race they take a pitstop where the wheels get changed. They oil gets changed and they go back and they stay longer. And so you don't need to be in a pit stop all the time. You lose the race and if you just don't do any pit stop, you're going to be burned out. So it's a diet to reset to kick start a new you and recharge and go forward. This impact comes from fasting. A lot of people compare it to exercise, you know, we used to talk about exercise 30 minutes and eating healthy and then intensive training came about. And that's like fasting. Same thing at college, right? People sometimes study on and off and then five days before the exam, they stress and they focus for 16 hours and 20 hours of study is that stress that sometimes lead to a positive outcome. Whether it's intensive exercise, whether it's fasting, whether it is studying before an exam, is confident that that leads to that positive outcome.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

I would say I did the five day Prolon and I lost a few pounds, by the end of it. What do you normally see? Is it sustainable? Does it happen additively if you do it three to four times a year?

Dr. Joseph Antoun:

Women would expect to lose close to five to six pounds, every cycle and men close to eight pounds per cycle. Now the fact of getting it back or not depends. The product inspires you to change your lifestyle. If you're addicted to the late night snacking, or carbs and now you're on the plant based, at least healthy ingredient based diet. So it depends on how you behave after. If you go back right away to your pizzas and burgers and pasta, then you're going to regain it, pretty fast. But remember, you would have also impacted regardless of weight you had put a fasting stress on the cells. And that's important and that's not something that you should disregard. If you start eating healthier, obviously keep the weight off longer. If your purpose is to lose weight, and keep losing it, then you can do it a little bit more frequently. If you still want to cheat in between, if you still want to have an unhealthy diet in between, then you do it a little bit more frequent than the three to four times. If otherwise you're healthy and fit, you don't have age related concerns, then you can do it as low as three to four times a year.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

All right, Dr. Antoun. Thank you so much for teaching us about fasting, mimicking diet, how it affects longevity and your weight. Do you have any other last words for our listeners?

Dr. Joseph Antoun:

I wanted to thank you for today, we're pretty excited about bringing about fasting to humanity. I think we all got into a mode of overeating and being sedentary and we're seeing the consequences of that. There's obesity and multiple chronic diseases around the world. My advice to people is to not just watch the quality of food but also the timing. Don't eat all the time. You keep gaining weight and putting more damage on yourself and injecting a little bit of fasting and fasting lifestyle has a lot of benefits.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

Right? So if our listeners want a doctor on board, they can definitely call us. We consults. I've had a few patients come from Prolon. Lamclinic.com. Call us and we do telemedicine and if you want the Prolon that's also avaliable.

Dr. Joseph Antoun:

We currently have over 14,000 clinics registered with us nationally to deliver Prolon or recommend Prolon to their consumers. That's a big support by doctors to nutritionists. We're very proud of and we cherish department partnership with the clinics around the US.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

Thank you for your work Dr Antoun. This is The Dr. Lam Show. We're here to empower you to take control of your health. If you've really enjoyed this episode, we ask that you like you share, and call us if you have any questions and see you next week.

Unknown:

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